Matthew 28

I read Matthew 28 today, and this one section really stood out to me:

11While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. 12And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers 13and said, "Tell people, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.' 14And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." 15So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.


I think this section really illustrates that even if people have clear evidence of Truth, some will still hold on to their disbelief. This is after Jesus was raised from the dead and the angel rolled away the stone. The soldiers saw with their own eyes what had happened. The Jewish leaders had an eye-witness account right their in front of them that Christ was raised, and yet they still did not trust Him as God's Son. When witnessing, even when you present a completely clear, logical explanation of the Gospel, some, and I dare say many, will not believe because they choose not to believe.

Jesus's Prayer

Ok, I have two things today. I'll write the other in the next post, but for now, I'd like to talk a moment on Jesus's prayer in Gethsemane. It's in Matthew 26:

36 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here, while I go over there and pray." 37And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38Then he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me." 39And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." 40And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, "So, could you not watch with me one hour? 41 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." 42Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done." 43And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. 45Then he came to the disciples and said to them, "Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand."

This has always been a special passage to me. I think it really shows Jesus's humanness, and shows us clearly how we're supposed to respond during trials. He tells His disciples to pray so that they "may not enter into temptation." They had gone through a long day, and they were doing what probably any of us would do to regain our strength: sleep. Jesus didn't sleep, however. Even though He had gone through a long day already, and He knew the next day would be the hardest of His life, He didn't sleep, but spent the night in prayer.

I think you can see his strength building as He prays. Compare the two segments of His prayer that we have: The first:


"My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will."

And the second:

"My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done."

There's a subtle, but I think important difference. They are essentially saying the same thing, but the in first statement, Christ is asking that He in some way be allowed not to have to endure the torment of the next day. The second statement is saying "Your sill be done, even though this cannot pass unless I do it." Just look at the core sentences if you take the grammatically "extra" words out:

First: "My Father... let this cup pass from me."
Second: "My Father... your will be done."

When we need our strength the most, we need to look to God in prayer. He is the source of all of our strength.

Matthew 25

Yes, I know, it's been a while. School's been out for about a week and a half now, but my girlfriend's been down for a week, then I got my wisdom teeth taken out yesterday, so because of that I haven't written in here since school let out. One of my favorite things to do in here was to write a little about my devotions, so I'm going to start doing that again.

The chapter I read today was Matthew 25.

It's divided up into three sections: The Parable of the Ten Virgins, the Parable of the Talents, and the Final Judgment. A little background here: Christ has been in the temple preaching and teaching after being received into Jerusalem by placing palm branches at his feet while he rides in on a donkey (to fulfill Zachariah 9:9). Lawyers, Pharisees, and Sadducees all come and ask him questions in succession, and Christ blows them out of the water to the point where no one "dare[d] to ask him any more questions" (Matt 22:46). In chapter 23 He rips into the scribes and pharisees and exposes them before the crowd as the hypocrites they are. Christ then foretells the destruction of the temple and the end of the age in chapter 24.

At the end of chapter 24 Christ says that no one, including himself, knows the hour of His return
except the Father. Chapter 25 is mostly parables about how we should be in waiting for His return. The section that stood out to me the most was the first section on the ten virgins. Basically, 10 maidens are waiting for the bridegroom to appear so they would be allowed to go to the wedding feast. 5 were alert and were smart enough to carry enough oil with them so their lamps would be lit throughout the night. The other 5 not only didn't have enough oil, but fell asleep while waiting. They had to go get more oil, and in that time the bridegroom came and took the 5 wise virgins with him, and when they other 5 finally came back, it was too late and they had to stay outside in the darkness. My study Bible has a couple sentences that really stood out to me: "The delay of Christ's return distinguishes the wise from the foolish. Being ready mean being prepared for a long delay; short-lived zeal is inadequate."

We should be prepared to wait a while for the Lord's return. It has already been about 2,000 years since he left, but we still do not know the day or the hour. We should constantly be preparing our lives and growing in Him. Yes, in one sense, we should be living each day as it could be our last, we should be witnessing and pointing each other to Christ, but in the other sense, we need to planning our lives for Him.

Ok, that's all for today. Hopefully write more soon.

Photo Meme

I got this idea from my mom... so I'm doing it. You go through the topics and search your answers in Google Image Search, and post a photo from the search from the first page of results. Sound interesting? Let's go!

Age at next birthday: 21



Place I'd like to travel: Hyderabad, Andrah Pradesh, India


Favorite Place: San Francisco


Favorite Things: Sorry... don't have a favorite "thing"

Favorite Food: Lately it's been Indian food


Favorite Color: Blue

Nicknames: HarperNo idea who this guy is... but he kept popping up in the image results

Birthplace: Greenville, SC

And that's it! Feel free to play along too!

Take control of your computer

Just wanted to write about a couple cool programs I really like and use frequently:

1. First, ObjectBar
   

That's the bar on the top of the screen. This is part of the StarDock suite of programs. If you have ever seen a mac, this does the same thing that their little bar does. You can just drag and drop applications or files to the bar, and it will automatically make a nice little shortcut for you on the bar. It makes my life a whole lot more efficient because I can open any of my frequently used applications instantly because they're right there. This program is free... but the full featured version cost some.

2. Second, Rainlendar

That's the calendar/todo list that you see there. This program is incredible. It just sits on your desktop, and can be brought up whenever you want. It can import the ical calendar format, so you can import Google Calendar or Outlook calendars.

3. Third, Stickies

I really like this program. It's the brown transparent note right in front of me. This program basically just opens up sticky notes on your computer. I know a lot of new operating systems can do this by themselves, but XP can't, and this is a great little tool to get them. Also, you can set the opacity of the note to completely opaque to almost i

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Barge must be slow on business

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Inter-racial santa's at cracker barrel!

Been a while

Hey, I don't have a lot of time, but I haven't posted on here in a while, so I am now. Life's good, This semester's been awesome so far. Mittu and I have finally officially started dating. :-) All my classes are good, I had to drop Logic due to time constraints, but that's OK. In no particular order: I'm taking French, Spanish, Biblical Church Ministry, Oral Communications for the Professions, Christian Family Forum, and Abnormal Psychology. Society's still awesome. I'm excited about it this semester, we seem to have a strong spiritual focus. Jeremiah Barba is doing a great job being president, I must say. Ok, I gtg, need to grab a quick lunch before I go on extension. See y'all.

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Nu delt game 3: peanut-butter and cheese puffs

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Nu delt game 2: inflate-a-glove

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Nu delt update: freshman baby bottle chugging contest

Photo Hunt "Colors" numbah 2--Braves Game

Ok, as promised, I'm replacing that cell phone picture with some nicer ones from my digital camera. We went to a Braves game yesterday, and it was their "armed forces day" or something, so throughout the game native Atlantians in the armed forces would give their shout out on the big screen TV in the back of the field from wherever they're stationed. Also, at the very beginning of the game, they pulled out this flag:



And then there was a cool helicopter fly-over:


I figured these could work because of the honoring of the "National Colors."

Photo Hunt "Colors" numbah 1--Snowcone Business

This is my hand after a normal day at work... That blue stuff there is blueberry syrup. Yay snowcones!!

Photo Hunt--theme "Cooked/Cooking"

This is for the photo hunt thing... The theme is cooking, so this works, right? We were bored at lunch one time, so we made David holding Goliath's head after their battle! Cool, no?

Photo Hunt--Theme "five"

I know, it isn't 5 kids if you look closely, but I drove all the way out there to take the picture, I had to put it up!

Last Post

Ignore the last post, I joined this group that does a "photohunt" every few days, and to join I had to add the Blogroll (list of everyone else who's signed up). Btw, sorry for not posting a photo for yesterday, I had a really cool idea... The theme was "five" and there are these statues downtown of a bunch of kids saluting a flag.... I thought there were five kids, but there were six. I might still post the photo, it's a cool statue, but we'll see...

Blogroll

Beginning of summer

Yeah, summer's been relaxing so far... though I'm ready to finally do something. I'm gonna work tomorrow (yay snowcone selling!). I'm leaving for camp June 2, so pray for me if yall could!

The last day of school was awesome. I saw Mittu again and hung out with her pretty much all day, that was a blast. We went to a graduation party for a friend of hers, and surprisingly I knew a bunch of random people there... Then we went downtown Greenville, then my house for dinner, then out for ice-cream with my brothers, then downtown Greenville again.

So far since then all I've done is play Lord of the Rings Online (I know, I'm a nerd) and stuff on the Wii... fun stuff. So yeah, I hope yall are having a more productive summer than mine so far! :-)

Lately

It's been a long time, and I probably won't write much here, but life's been good. I'm about to finish up my second year of college, woot. I can't believe how fast it's gone by. All my classes look good... my worst class is Philosophy of Education... I won't go into details about it, but it's hard. I'm expecting to pass it though.

This summer I'm heading out to the grand state of California for the 3 summer of working at Castlepoint Ministries. I'm excited, it should be a blast. Be praying for us, we'll need it. Lots of work, you're dead tired, screaming campers are climbing all over you, but it's awesome.

Chapel has been incredible the past couple days. A man who was in a wheelchair and his wife gave their testimonies. He was in a car accident a few years back, and became paralyzed. Just seeing their faith and complete dependence and joy in God was incredible, and hearing story after story of God's provision was really encouraging. I think it was really good timing too... I don't know if the administration meant to do this or not by bringing that speaker in, but recently a student at BJ was in a bad car wreck in which he lost his arm. His faith has been incredible too, I've heard story after story of him witnessing to the doctors and being perfectly ok with what God let come into his life. Even still, I know a number of students were... pained by what happened to him. I think these couple of chapels really helped with that and pushed the student body to focus completely on God.

Well, not as short as I thought it would be, but I'm taking my leave now. I will catch all of you all later.

Girlfriend

As of last night, I officially have a girlfriend! She's an awesome girl, cares about God, super friendly, great personality... She's sitting out this semester (that picture is actually from the last day I saw her......), which is sad cause I won't get to see her till May when she visits for graduation, but it's ok. She's where God wants her. Quickie version of the story, we've known each other since towards the beginning of last semester, and we started getting close around the last half of the semester. Over Christmas break we called a lot, and we've gotten super close since then. Saturday we talked about going into a relationship, but we decided to take a few days to really think and pray about it. The next few times we talked she would ask me some important questions on her mind, I'd answer them. Last night we talked and made it official! Not the most romantic rendition of the story, I know, but I don't want to put up all of my personal information on the web! You understand, I'm sure, if you want to know more, ask me in person!

As of Late...

Yeah, so, the other day... well, a week ago, I went to the library to study for a few hours, and when I came home there was this little white box in front of our tv... and my brother and dad had little white remote/controllers in their hands... and they were trying to set up the internet on our new Nintendo Wii! Yeah, it pretty much is the bombdiggidy (spelling?). It comes with Wii Sports, which is awesome. It has tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, boxing... We've played that like non stop since we've gotten the machine. We've rented Excite Truck, which my brothers are out buying right now. My favorite game so far I think is Trauma Center: Second Opinion (pictured above). In that game you play an aspiring surgeon... quite fun.

Something else sweet happened recently... as in, today. My society (Nu Delta Chi Vikings) at BJ won their first round of schol bowl (a nice little battle of the brains type dealio). We played against the Zoe Alethea Wildcats, and beat them a sound 515 to 55.... Yeah, we were happy, lol.

One more thing, something I never thought Bob Jones would ever do.... They're showing a movie, the disney version of the Chronicles of Narnia in Straton Hall. Sweet, no?

Well, I just heard my brothers return, so I think I'm going to go say hi...

This Semester

Well, this semester's been busy. It's not been impossible, yet, but still busy. I'm loving all of my classes (even my literature class... dude, what's gotten into me?). Mi favorito es probablemente... Practice of Counseling... o Experimental Psychology... o Life and Ministry of Paul... me gusta todos! Spanish is a little bit harder this semester, but I think that's mainly because I had years of it in high school, but not since the 10th grade, so last semester was Elementary Spanish 1 which covered pretty much everything I had learned in high school... it was a nice review. This semester, however, is a little harder because it's dealing with stuff I've never learned before. My hardest class is probably Philosophy of Education. First day, she tells us that 2/3 of the class are grad students... not a good thing to hear as a sophomore... I think I'll be ok in it, lots of prayer and lots of work, and I should be good.

Socially, life's going well. No girlfriend yet... we're staying friends for now, we have our reasons. I have lots of friends to hang out with, eat with, go to the games with, etc. I've been meeting new people in my classes, so yeah, not missing out on too much right now. Chapel's lately have been really good. We had Ran (Ron?) Hummel from the Wilds come down and preach a couple days. Before and after those messages, Dr. Steve preached, both of them spoke on Psalm 119, different exact passages, I think, but they talked about the Word and how important it should be to our daily lives, how much it affects us.

Anywho, I think I'm gonna head to bed, I just wanted to write a little while waiting for some CD's to finish importing into my computer. Adios, hasta luego!

Updates

Well, I'm again hoping to get back in the blogging scene. I've kinda split up my interests in writing here, the links are on the right. We've got "Life," "Christ," "Tech," and "Mobile." Life's for just every day stuff and goings on in my life. Christ is devotional thoughts and the like. Tech... I'm not a geek, I promise! I just have a... casual interest in technology. And Mobile is just if I want to post something random I see or something from the road, it goes there. We'll see if I keep up with this stuff this time, hopefully I will. Anywho, catch yall later.